Ohio History Journal

LARRY L. NELSON

 

Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange,

and the Invention of the Ohio Frontier

 

 

There was little rest for Alexander McKee during the autumn of 1793.

Over the course of the preceding three years, a loose confederation of Native

Americans from along the Maumee River Valley had looked to their British

allies for assistance. In their campaign to expel the United States from the

Ohio Country, the northwestern tribes had already frustrated two American

expeditions into the region. In October 1790, troops commanded by Josiah

Harmar had retreated in disarray after encountering unexpectedly stiff Indian re-

sistance at the headwaters of the Maumee. In November of the following

year, the confederated tribes had completely routed a second United States

army led by Arthur St. Clair. Now, the tribes along the Maumee watched

with mounting concern as a third force, with Anthony Wayne at its head,

poised itself to strike at the native stronghold.¹

Comprised of the Miami, Shawnee, and Delaware tribes living along the

Maumee, together with individuals from other bands who had fled to the area

after the commencement of hostilities, the confederacy opposing Wayne was

as much a creation of McKee and the British government as of the Indians

themselves. To be sure, the tribes making up the coalition had voluntarily

come together for their mutual defense. They pursued their own interests and

set their own agendas. But the aid that McKee offered and the continued sup-

port that the British government promised served as the glue which held the

alliance together.

 

 

Larry Nelson is site manager with the Ohio Historical Society at Fort Meigs State Memorial.

 

1. This and the following two paragraphs are based on the correspondence found in the

John Graves Simcoe Papers, (MG23 H11) Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. See

also Earnest A. Cruikshank, ed., The Correspondence of Lieutenant Governor John Graves

Simcoe, With Allied Documents Relating to His Administration of Upper Canada, 5 vols.

(Toronto, 1923-31), passim; Wiley Sword, President Washington's Indian War: The Struggle

fbr the Old Northwest, 1790-1795 (Norman, Okla., 1985); Reginald Horsman, "The British

Indian Department and Resistance to General Anthony Wayne," Mississippi Valley Historical

Review, 49 (September, 1962), 269-90. For general studies, see Robert F. Berkhofer, "Barrier

to Settlement: British Indian Policy in the Old Northwest, 1783-1794," in David M. Ellis, ed.,

The Frontier in American Development: Essays in Honor of Paul Wallace Gates (Ithaca and

London, 1969), 249-76; Reginald Horsman, "American Indian Policy in the Old Northwest,

1783-1812," William and Mary Quarterly, 18 (January, 1961), 35-53; Robert S. Allen, His

Majesty's Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defense of Canada, 1774-1815 (Toronto

and Oxford, 1992), 57-87.

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Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                                   73

 

McKee (born c.1735-died 1799), a fur trader, land speculator, and agent with

the British Indian Department, played an active role in lower Great Lakes

Anglo-Indian affairs for nearly fifty years. Fathered by a white trader but

raised, in part, by his Shawnee mother, McKee was equally at home in either

culture. He had lived among, traded with, and fought along side many of the

Ohio Country tribes. As tensions between the western tribes and the United

States flared into open warfare during the 1790s, he met with tribal delega-

tions at his post at the foot of the Maumee Rapids to discuss strategy, dis-

pense gifts, and offer advice. He attempted to persuade the reluctant northern-

lake tribes to join the league. At the same time, he worked to isolate repre-

sentatives from the accommodationist eastern Iroquois confederacy who felt

that it would be in their interests to avoid armed conflict. He oversaw the

shipment of military supplies and provisions from British officials at Detroit

to his storehouse on the Maumee and coordinated covert British military as-

sistance to the warring tribes. He entertained American envoys and received

emissaries from the Crown. He directed spies, interrogated deserters, and ex-

changed prisoners. American ambition, native apprehension, and imperial as-

piration converged at the British outpost along the rapids. In the center stood

Alexander McKee.

McKee was a cultural mediator, a go-between who linked the native and

European worlds. For much of the last half of the eighteenth century he had

exploited his familial affiliation and close economic ties to both communities

to encourage trade, foster diplomatic relations, and to forge a military alliance

between the British government and the tribes of the Old Northwest. A

shrewd, skilled negotiator and loyal British partisan, McKee employed his

abilities throughout his career to reconcile Crown and native political, mili-

tary, and economic interests.²

McKee was not alone as cultural mediator. Throughout the frontier era

many others fulfilled similar roles. Perhaps the best known cultural mediator

working within the Ohio Country was McKee's British Indian Department

subordinate Simon Girty, the notorious Tory renegade. Other mediators in-

 

 

2. McKee's life may be traced in the Papers of Alexander and Thomas McKee, (MG19

F16), Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario; McKee Papers, Burton Historical

Collection, Detroit Public Library, Detroit, Michigan; and McKee Family File, Fort Malden

National Historic Park, Amherstburg, Ontario. For published biographies of McKee, see

Walter R. Hoberg, "Early History of Colonel Alexander McKee," Pennsylvania Magazine of

History and Biography, 58 (January, 1934), 26-36; Walter R. Hoberg, "A Tory in the

Northwest," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 59 (January, 1935), 32-41; John

H. Carter, "Alexander McKee, Our Most Noted Tory," Northumberland County Historical

Society Proceedings, 22 (Spring, 1958), 60-75. See also Larry L. Nelson, "Cultural Mediation

on the Great Lakes Frontier: Alexander McKee and Anglo-American Indian Affairs, 1754-

1799" (Ph.D. diss., Bowling Green State University, 1994); Frederick Wulff, "Colonel

Alexander McKee and British Indian Policy, 1735-1799" (MA thesis, University of Wisconsin-

Milwaukee, 1969); Patricia Talbot Davis, "Alexander McKee, Frontier Tory, 1776-1794" (MA

thesis, Bryn Mawr College, 1967).

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74                                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

cluded Girty and McKee's Indian department colleague Matthew Elliott;

Andrew Montour, a translator and diplomatic envoy active in western

Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio during the mid-eighteenth century; William

Wells, a white youth captured and raised among the Indians who fought

against Arthur St. Clair in 1791 but who served as a spy and translator for

Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers in 1794; John Slover, another captive

who returned to white society and acted as Colonel William Crawford's guide

during his ill-fated expedition against the Ohio tribes in 1782 and who later

narrated Henry Breckinridge's famous account of the American commander's

death at the hands of his Indian captors; and Abraham Kuhn, a Pennsylvania

trader who married a Wyandot woman living near Lower Sandusky and who

became known as "Chief Coon," a respected tribal statesman and advisor dur-

ing the late 1780s.³

Cultural mediators played a central role in a complex process of cultural ex-

change that took place throughout the Great Lakes frontier. It is axiomatic

that when two cultures meet, both are changed by the experience. But when

two diverse peoples first come into contact, much of the encounter is mutu-

ally incomprehensible. Differences of language, custom, and world view con-

spire to deprive both parties of opportunities for intelligible communication

on all but the most basic level. As a result, cultures frequently resort to what

historian Richard White has characterized as a process of creative and expedi-

ent misunderstandings. Individuals from each culture attempt to direct their

efforts at communication to the perceived beliefs and social conventions of

the other. That these initial perceptions are often false is of little conse-

quence, for out of these misunderstandings arise shared perceptions regarding

the meaning of the encounter. The form and significance of a cultural en-

counter, then, are predetermined only in small measure by the cultural impera-

 

 

3. Colin G. Calloway, "Simon Girty: Interpreter and Intermediary," in James A. Clifton, ed.,

Being and Becoming Indian: Biographical Studies of North American Frontiers (Chicago,

1989), 38-58; Reginald Horsman, Matthew Elliott: British Indian Agent (Detroit, 1964); Nancy

L. Hagedorn, "'Faithful, Knowing and Prudent': Andrew Montour as Interpreter and Cultural

Broker, 1740-1772," in Margaret Connell Szasz, ed., Between Indian and White Worlds: The

Cultural Broker (Norman and London, 1994), 25-43; Paul A. Hutton, "William Wells: Frontier

Scout and Indian Agent," Indiana Magazine of History, 74 (September, 1978), 183-222; Consul

W. Butterfield, An Historical Account of the Expedition against Sandusky under Col. William

Crawford in 1782 (Cincinnati, 1873), 126-28; Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin, "Ethnohistorical

Report on the Wyandot, Ottawa, Chippewa, Munsee, Delaware, Shawnee, and Potawatomi on

Royce Areas 53 and 54," in Indians of Northern Ohio and Southeastern Michigan (New York,

1974), 174, 188-89. For other studies of cultural mediation, see Nancy L. Hagedorn, "'A

Friend to Go Between Them': The Interpreter as Cultural Broker During Anglo-Iroquois

Councils, 1740-79," Ethnohistory, 35 (Winter, 1988), 34-59; Yohuside Kawashima, "Forest

Diplomats, The Role of Interpreters in Indian-White Relations on the Early Frontier,"

American Indian Quarterly, 13 (Winter, 1989), 1-14; Daniel K. Richter, "Cultural Brokers and

Intercultural Politics: New York-Iroquois Relations, 1664-1701," Journal of American History,

75 (June, 1988), 40-67; Clara Sue Kidwell, "Indian Women as Cultural Mediators,"

Ethnohistory, 39 (Spring, 1992), 97-107.

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Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                                      75

 

tives brought to the meeting by each party. They are also mediated to a sub-

stantial degree through the negotiated manipulation of the encounter's specific

circumstances. As members of both cultures interact, working relationships

are established, and through these relationships a sense of common under-

standing emerges.⁴

As the encounter matures and grows more complex, each party grows in-

creasingly reliant upon the services of cultural mediators, individuals whose

experiences have bridged both cultures. Always bilingual, usually related to

both societies through birth, marriage, or adoption, and particularly adept at

transacting the affairs of each in the world of the other, mediators become the

specialized medium through which cultures become interconnected.

Historians Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson have suggested that the

frontier was a zone of cultural inter-penetration, a region where indigenous

peoples and intruders encountered one another and where, eventually, one or

the other imposed a cultural hegemony over the entire area. But the frontier

was also a zone of mutual re-invention. Europeans and natives alike volun-

tarily, indeed eagerly, adopted elements of each other's culture. Moreover,

that adoption was always pragmatic and highly selective. The Ohio frontier

was a new creation. Fashioned from self-conscious choices by those engaged

in the region's myriad forms of cultural interaction, the frontier contained

readily identifiable elements from both Indian and white societies, but com-

bined them in ways that were new and ingenious. Standing astride the cul-

tural divide as they guided and shaped native and European interaction, cultural

mediators became creators as well as creations of the Ohio frontier.⁵

The new world invented by the process of cultural exchange was related to,

 

 

4. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes

Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge and New York, 1991), ix-x; Jeremy Boissevain, Friends of

Friends: Networks, Manipulators, and Coalitions (New York, 1974), 27; Edward Spicer,

"Types of Contact and Process of Change," in Edward Spicer, ed., Perspectives in American

Indian Cultural Change (Chicago, 1961), 153-67; Christopher L. Miller and George R. Hamell,

"A New Perspective on Indian-White Contact: Cultural Symbols and Colonial Trade," Journal

of American History, 73 (September, 1986), 326.

5. Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson, eds., The Frontier in History: North American

and Southern Africa Compared (New Haven, 1981), 1-13; For the frontier as a zone of cre-

ation, see James Merrell, The Indians New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from Contact

through the Era of Removal (Chapel Hill, 1989), and James Merrell, "'The Customs of Our

Countrey': Indians and Colonists in Early America," in Bernard Bailyn and Philip Morgan,

eds., Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (Chapel Hill and

London, 1991), 117-56. For culturally based studies of the Ohio frontier, see White, The

Middle Ground; Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and its

Peoples, 1724-1774 (Lincoln and London, 1992); Eric Alden Hinderaker, "The Creation of the

American Frontier: Europeans and Indians in the Ohio River Valley, 1673-1800" (Ph.D. diss.,

Harvard University, 1991). For summaries of recent scholarship, see Gregory H. Nobles,

"Breaking into the Backcountry: New Approaches to the Early American Frontier, 1750-

1800," William and Mary Quarterly, 46 (October, 1989), 641-70, and Stephen Aron, "The

Significance of the Kentucky Frontier," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 91

(Summer, 1993), 298-323.

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76                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

yet distinct from, both native and European precedent. The Ohio Country

was socially diverse, an intricate cultural mosaic whose members asserted and

defended a tangled web of interconnected national, regional, local, and individ-

ual agendas. European aims within the region were never unified and white

stratagems frequently collapsed along opposing national, religious, or eco-

nomic lines. Indian allegiances were equally fragmented. Sovereign tribes

and autonomous bands independently pursued their own self-interests through

separate, often competing policies. But inter- and intra-ethnic cooperation

also defined social reality along the Ohio frontier as much as inter- and intra-

ethnic rivalry. Although cultural encounters were occasionally marked by vi-

olence, more commonly the very fabric of everyday life instigated a peaceful

process of cultural interaction. The Great Lakes frontier became an open, as-

similative world of shifting relationships in constant evolution. In this

world, political loyalties and cultural values were fluid, pragmatic, and uncer-

tain. National, ethnic, even racial affiliation could become problematic.

Social ambivalence and cultural interdependence were the natural by-products

of the region's inter-cultural contact, trade, marriage, and diplomacy. Within

this world, cultural mediators took on great importance. Able to transcend

the boundaries of nation, race, and culture, mediators employed their skills to

facilitate, and occasionally direct, the course of native and European interac-

tion.⁶

All cultural mediators share several characteristics. First, they live within a

socially complex environment where opportunities for intercultural contact

and exchange are likely to occur. Secondly, they occupy a position of central-

ity within that environment. Standing at the cultural intersections permits

the broker to manipulate the terms under which interaction takes place.

Cultural mediators also utilize first- and second-order societal resources.

First-order resources are those directly controlled by the mediator. They can

include commodities, such as trade goods or furs; specific forms of empow-

erment, such as the ability to enact or enforce trade regulations or the author-

ity to grant access to tribal lands; and specialized skills or knowledge such as

facility in native and European languages and expertise in the ordinary social

customs and highly conventionalized protocols required for trade and diplo-

macy. Contacts with other individuals, themselves often cultural brokers who

have access to first-order assets, constitute second-order resources. First-order

assets, when combined with an extensive network of family members, busi-

ness associates, and personal friends, allowed a mediator to speak not only for

Indians, but as an Indian, not only for Europeans, but as a European, not only

for tribal authorities and colonial officials, but as one central to the decision-

 

 

6. Colin G. Calloway, "Beyond the Vortex of Violence: Indian-White Relations in the Ohio

Country, 1783-1815," Northwest Ohio Quarterly, 64 (Winter, 1992), 16-26. See also

"Introduction," in Bailyn and Morgan, Strangers Within the Realm, 1-31.

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Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                                   77

 

making process on both sides of the cultural line. The acquisition of first-

and second-order resources accorded cultural mediators a position of great in-

fluence from which they could negotiate the price of goods, demand a desired

quantity or insist upon a high standard of quality for specific items, outlaw

certain products or trading practices, prohibit or encourage trading activity at

specified locations or throughout entire regions, and invite or evict individual

traders or groups of traders into or from their territory.⁷

The fur trade was the great engine of cultural transformation along the

western border. Commerce in pelts supplied by Indians and trade goods ex-

changed by Europeans sparked the creation of the interconnected net of per-

sonal relationships, business partnerships, military alliances, and political ac-

cords that formed the institutional framework within which native and white

encounters took place. Even on the Ohio Valley frontier, literally at the very

edge of the British Empire, the fur trade was a powerful, sophisticated instru-

ment of cultural and economic exchange. Embodiments of the frontier's cul-

tural pluralism, mediators were at the center of this process.⁸

The fur trade provided an impressive array of goods destined for the western

nations. In June 1766 the eastern trading firm of Baynton, Warton, and

Morgan invoiced Fort Pitt for a diverse inventory that included claret, rum,

blankets, tobacco, gun flints, paint, wampum, hatchets, brass kettles, bar

lead, thread, vermilion, lace, gun powder, bullet molds, hunting saddles, tin

cups, jews harps, combs, knives, awls, muskets, bed lacing, shears, ribbon,

pipes, looking glass, razors, silver jewelry, needles, and articles of clothing

including ruffled shirts, plain shirts, calico shirts, leggings, matchcoats, gar-

tering, and breechclouts. The following year, the Indian department commis-

sary at the post reported that over 26,000 pounds sterling worth of merchan-

dise, including 6,500 gallons of rum, had passed through the fort. He also

noted that over 13,000 gallons of rum had been distributed by unlicensed

traders and that other sutlers had exchanged up to 40,000 pounds sterling

worth of goods. In return, Fort Pitt had taken in 10,587 pounds (weight) of

beaver pelts, 15,253 pounds of raccoon skins, 178,613 pounds of "Fall

Skins," 104,016 pounds of "Summer Skins," and smaller amounts of pelts

from otters, fishers, wolves, panthers, elk, and bear.⁹

 

 

7. Boissevain, Friends of Friends, 147-69.

8. T. H. Breen, "An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776,"

Journal of British Studies, 25 (October, 1986), 467-99; James H. Merrell, "'Our Bond of

Peace': Patterns of Intercultural Exchange on the Carolina Piedmont, 1650-1750," in Peter

Wood, Gregory Waselkov, and Thomas Hatley, eds., Powhatan's Mantel: Indians in the

Colonial Southeast (Lincoln, 1989), 198-222. For a general study, see Carolyn Gilman, Where

Two Worlds Meet: The Great Lakes Fur Trade (St. Paul, 1982).

9. "The Crown to Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan For sundry goods delivered at different

Times, by order of Capt. Murray and Mr. Alexander McKee assistant agent for Indian Affairs,

for the use of the Indians, June 12, 1766," James Sullivan, Alexander Flick, Milton W.

Hamilton, et. al., eds., The Papers of Sir William Johnson, 14 vols. (Albany, 1921-1965), 5:

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78                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

At its most basic level the fur trade permitted Indians simply to exchange

traditional items of native manufacture for similar items made in Europe.

Blankets, for instance, might replace pelts or woven mats; glass beads might

be used instead of wampum in ceremonial belts; trade silver might substitute

for jewelry made from shell or copper; kettles and pots of iron or brass would

serve for those earlier made of fire-baked clay. But at a deeper, more subtle

level, the acceptance and use of trade goods signaled a beginning of the pro-

cess of cultural change that was at the very heart of the invented frontier.¹⁰

European travelers within the Ohio back country often commented upon the

combination of native and European elements that made up Indian dress.

Nicholas Cresswell, a young Englishman who dabbled in the Ohio fur trade

just prior to the Revolution, visited Captain White-Eyes, a Delaware head-

man, at his village on the Upper Tuscarawas River in September, 1775. The

dress of the men at the village, noted Cresswell,

is short, white linen or calico shirts which come a little below their hips without

buttons at neck or wrists and in general ruffled and a great number of small

brooches stuck in it. Silver plates about three inches broad round the wrists of

their arms, silver wheels in their ears, which are stretched long enough for the tip

of the ear to touch the shoulder, silver rings in their noses, Breechclout and

Mockeysons with a matchcoat that serves them for a bed at night . . . The women

wear the same sort of shirts as the men. Wear their hair long, curled down the back

in silver plates, if they can afford it, if not tied in a club with red gartering. No

rings in the nose but plenty in the ears.  Both men and women paint with

Vermilion and other colours mixed with Bear's Oil and adorn themselves with any

tawdry thing they think pretty.¹¹

 

Other observers made an explicit connection between appearance and the

frontier's ambiguous sense of cultural identity. In 1742 the Moravian bene-

factor and missionary Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf met with

Andrew Montour near Shamokin, Pennsylvania. Zinzendorf had found

Montour, the son of a French woman and an Oneida war chief, wearing a sky-

colored coat of fine cloth and a black cordovan neckband decorated with silver

bugles, a red damask lapelled waistcoat, breeches, shoes, stockings, and a hat.

The Moravian claimed that although Montour's ears were "braided with brass

and other wire like a handle on a basket," and that he wore "an Indianish broad

ring of bear fat and paint" on his face, his appearance was remarkably

 

246-60; "Return of the Amount of Merchandise brought to Fort Pitt in the year 1767," Ibid., 12:

396; "Return of Peltry sent from Fort Pitt in the Year 1767," Ibid., 397. See also Lawrence S.

Thurman, "An Account Book of Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan at Fort Pitt, 1765-1767,"

Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 29 (September, 1946), 141-46.

10. Miller and Hamell, "A New Perspective on Indian-White Contact," 318; James Axtell,

"The English Colonial Impact on Indian Culture," in James Axtell, The European and the

Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial America (Oxford, 1981), 253-54.

11. Lincoln MacVeagh, ed., The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell: 1774-1777 (New York,

1924), 120-21.

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Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                           79

 

European and that when addressed in French, the interpreter responded cor-

dially in English.¹²

It was not just Indians who adopted white articles of clothing. Whites

quickly sought out and acquired Indian modes of dress which they found prac-

tical and eminently suited to the frontier environment. In the spring of 1775

Cresswell traveled from Fort Pitt to Harwood's (Harrod's) Landing, an iso-

lated settlement on the Kentucky River, and then back again. His traveling

companions, whom he described as a "motley, rascally, and ragged crew,"

consisted of "two Englishmen, two Irishmen, one Welshman, two Dutchmen,

two Virginians, two Marylanders, one Swede, one African Negro, and a

Mulatto." "I believe there is but two pair of Breeches in the company," re-

marked Cresswell, "one belonging to Mr. Tilling and the other to myself.

The rest wear breechclouts, leggings and hunting shirts, which have never

been washed only by the rain since they were made.¹³

The party's native garb was no mere costume. Culturally, Cresswell and

the men in his party were no longer completely European. Nor, despite their

clothing, had they become Indian. Rather, they had selectively adopted ele-

ments from native culture and retained others of their own to re-invent them-

selves in response to the region's intercultural contact. The men's appearance

reflected an emerging frontier identity in which national allegiance was blurred

and ethnic affiliation diffused. Cresswell himself was aware of how his expe-

riences along the frontier had affected his sense of self-identity. In August

1775 he employed an Indian woman to make a pair of moccasins, leggings,

and other clothing that he hoped to wear on his next trip to the Ohio

Country. His selection of native attire was not haphazard. Rather, it was in-

formed by a finely-honed appreciation for the frontier's evolving cultural val-

ues. Warned by another English trader that his Indian clients would be in-

sulted by a white man coming among them wearing a hunting shirt, he also

ordered a calico shirt "made in the Indian fashion." When he wore his new

clothes for the first time, "trimmed with Silver Brooches and Armplates," he

claimed that "I scarcely know myself."¹⁴

The inventive process of reciprocal, discretionary cultural exchange occa-

sionally led to unexpected juxtapositions of the native and European worlds.

Margaret Handley Erskine, a captive who lived with the Ohio Shawnee from

1779 until 1784, became fond of the wife of a village chief, Blue Pocket, dur-

ing her time with the tribe. Erskine remembered Blue Pocket's wife, a "half

French woman of Detroit," as a woman who enjoyed living in great style in a

 

 

12. William C. Reichel, ed., Memorials of the Moravian Church (Philadelphia, 1870), 1:95;

see also Hagedorn, "Faithful, Knowing, and Prudent," 57, and Paul A. W. Wallace, Indians in

Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1968), 178.

13. MacVeagh, The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 83-84, 87.

14. Ibid., 102-03.

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80                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

luxurious house furnished with curtained beds and silver spoons. The Indian

party that captured a young Englishman, Thomas Ridout, along the Ohio

River in 1787, gave their prisoner a breakfast of chocolate and flour cakes as

they made their way back to their villages on the Maumee River in northwest

Ohio. After reaching the Maumee, Ridout lived with an "old Chief" named

Kakinathucca, his wife Metsigemewa, and a negro slave. On Ridout's first

day with his new family, Metsigemewa prepared breakfast by using bear's fat

to fry venison in an iron skillet, boiling water in a copper kettle, and brewing

tea sweetened with maple sugar in a yellow-ware teapot. When finished, she

served the meal on pewter plates and in yellow cups and saucers matching the

teapot. David Jones, a Baptist missionary who traveled to Indian villages

throughout east-central Ohio in 1772 and 1773, enjoyed a meal of fat buffalo,

beaver tails, and chocolate with his Indian hosts while Nicholas Cresswell

drank tea with Captain White-Eyes and Captain Wingenund in their cabin at

Kanaughtonhead (Gnadenhutten) in 1775.15

Native food choices reflected direct contact with Europeans through the fur

trade, gift giving, military action (the chocolate that Ridout was given after

his capture had been taken at the same time that he was), and a selective adop-

tion of European crops and agricultural practices. Lieutenant John Boyer, an

officer serving with General Anthony Wayne along the Auglaize and Maumee

Rivers in the summer of 1794, commented that Indian gardens within the re-

gion produced "vegetables of every kind in abundance" and that corn fields

measuring "not less than one thousand acres" stretched for miles along the

rich river flood plains near the Glaize, a large Indian settlement located at the

confluence of the two rivers. Wayne himself was amazed at the area's highly

cultivated gardens and noted that he had never "before beheld such immense

fields of corn, in any part of America, from Canada to Florida." In addition to

the traditional selection of corn, beans, and squash, Indian fields throughout

the Ohio frontier frequently contained European crops such as turnips, cab-

bage, pumpkins, cucumbers, "Irish" potatoes (a Meso-American staple trans-

ported to the Old World by the Spanish during the sixteenth century, spread

throughout Europe in the seventeenth century and then introduced into Ohio

 

 

15. John H. Moore, ed., "A Captive of the Shawnees, 1779-1784," West Virginia History, 23

(July, 1962), 291; Thomas Ridout, "An Account of My Capture by the Shawaneses Indians,"

Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 12 (January, 1929), 10, 17. In another example of

cultural mediation along the frontier, a white man "about twenty-two years of age, who had

been taken prisoner when a lad and had been adopted, and was now a chief among the

Shawanese," approached Ridout immediately after his capture. The otherwise unidentified

mediator "stood up and said to me in English, 'Don't be afraid, sir, you are in no danger, but

are given to a good man, a chief of the Shawanese, who will not hurt you; but after some time

will take you to Detroit, where you may ransom yourself. Come and take your breakfast.'"

See Ibid., 10. See also David Jones, A Journal of Two Visits Made to some Nations of Indians on

the West Side of the River Ohio, In the Years 1772 and 1773 (Burlington, 1774), 53; MacVeagh,

The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 111-12.

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Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                        81

by the French and English in the eighteenth century), and African foods such as watermelons and muskmelons. "Regular and thrifty" orchards adjacent to Indian homes produced a cornucopia of fruits. Moreover, some tribes also raised livestock. Oliver Spencer, a captive who lived at the Glaize until 1794, claimed that the Indians along the Maumee River kept neither cattle, hogs, nor sheep. But the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger noted that several tribal bands in eastern Ohio were raising cattle because they had be- come "very fond of milk and butter," while his colleague, John Heckewelder, recorded that Indians also owned chickens and semi-domesticated pigs.16   16. Lt. [John] Boyer, A Journal of Wayne's Campaign ... (Cincinnati, 1866), 5; "Wayne to the Secretary of War, 14th August, 1794," American State Papers: Documents Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States-Indian Affairs (Washington, D.C., 1832), 1:490. The extent and wide diversity of native horticulture along the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers astounded Wayne's soldiers, eliciting nearly universal comment within the surviving journals and diaries. For representative observations, see "Isaac Paxton," in James McBride, Pioneer History ... (Cincinnati, 1871), 127; Richard C. Knopf, ed., "A Precise Journal of General Wayne's Last Campaign," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 64 (October, 1954), 284-85; Dwight Smith, ed., With Captain Edward Miller in the Wayne Campaign of 1794 (Ann Arbor, 1965), 3-4; Richard C. Knopf, ed., "Two Journals of the Kentucky Volunteers, 1793 and 1794," Filson Club Quarterly, 27 (July, 1953), 263; Reginald E. McGrane, ed.,

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82                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

In addition to agricultural practices, the process of selective cultural re-in-

vention revealed itself in other areas of the Ohio frontier's economy. When

the missionary David Jones began his journey into Ohio in 1773, he traveled

well supplied with trade goods and other useful items. Jones hoped to barter

with the region's Indians for provisions and other supplies as he moved deep

within the Ohio back country, believing that "these Indians as yet have not

the use of money." Jones, though, was badly mistaken. The evangelist

learned that nearly every good or service that he required during his trip could

only be purchased with cash. At a small settlement north of the Hocking

River, Jones bought milk for himself and corn for his horses "at a very ex-

pensive price." Later, he was forced to pay twenty-five dollars for a horse and

six dollars for a guide to escort him from the Muskingum River to the Ohio

even though, as Jones later discovered, the guide "knew not the course."

When he tried to retain the services of a translator for five pounds a month,

the translator easily dickered the price up to seven pounds, causing Jones to

comment that the region's Indians "from the greatest to the least, seem mer-

cenary and excessively greedy of gain." Complaining that meat could not be

purchased at any price and that milk was selling at nine-pence a quart and but-

ter for two shillings a pound, Jones ended his journey "much discouraged ...

by hardships and want of provisions."¹⁷

Other changes within the region's economy were widely reflected through-

out the Ohio Country. By the early 1770s many of the Indian communities

located along the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Rivers had adapted to a cash

economy by becoming market-based centers for the exchange of goods and

services. When Jones purchased milk and corn while on his journey, he did so

from a Shawnee woman whom Jones described as the chief of a small mixed-

band of Delaware and Shawnee families. The woman, claimed the mission-

ary, was "esteemed very rich" and frequently boarded travelers in a small cabin

usually occupied by her African slaves. Moreover, she also kept a sizable

herd of cattle in order to produce both milk and beef for sale to her guests.

 

 

"William Clark's Journal of Wayne's Campaign," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 1

(December, 1915), 424. See also Archer Butler Hulbert and William Nathaniel Schwarze,

eds., "David Zeisberger's History of the Northern American Indians," Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society Quarterly, 19 (Winter, 1910), 14-16; John Heckewelder,

History, Manners, and Customs of The Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and

the Neighboring States . . . (Philadelphia, 1876), 147, 157. Heckewelder also noted the exis-

tence of domesticated house cats. See also O. M. Spencer, Indian Captivity: A True Narrative

of the Capture of Rev. O. M. Spencer by the Indians in the Neighborhood of Cincinnati . . .

(New York, 1835), 83. For Indian orchards, see Franklin B. Dexter, ed., Diary of David

McClure, Doctor of Divinity, 1748-1820 (New York, 1899), 68. For general discussions of na-

tive agricultural practices, see R. Douglas Hurt, Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to

the Present (Lawrence, 1987), 27-41; J. Mclver Weatherford, Indian Givers: How the Indians

of the Americas Transformed the World (New York, 1988), particularly 79-115.

17. Jones, A Journal of Two Visits, 33, 85, 87, 99-101, 104, 108-09. See also Hinderaker,

"The Creation of the American Frontier," 367-71.

• 11
 

Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                             83

 

Likewise, in 1804 the French traveler Constantin Francois Volney reported

that the Miami chief Little Turtle kept a cow and made butter at his home

near Fort Wayne, but that he did not "indulge himself in these things, but re-

serves them for the whites."¹⁸

Cultural mediators, usually European men who had married Indian women

and who maintained either a permanent or semi-permanent residence among

the western tribes, also played an active part in the region's transformed econ-

omy. Jones remarked that Richard Conner, a trader from Maryland, had estab-

lished "sort of a tavern" for the convenience of travelers on the upper-

Muskingum. Likewise, John Irwine kept a considerable inventory of goods

at Chillicothe, a Shawnee village near present-day Frankfort in south-central

Ohio. Irwine sold his wares to travelers from a log building rented from an-

other Indian who resided in the town. Chillicothe was also the home of

Moses Henry, a Lancaster trader and gunsmith who pursued both occupations

for native and European clients at the village. Henry lived "in a comfortable

manner, having plenty of good beef, pork, milk, &c.," claimed Jones. "His

generosity to me was singular, and equal to my highest wishes."¹⁹

Commercial establishments such as these were common throughout the

Ohio frontier. The Glaize, a community comprised of seven distinct

Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami villages, was clustered around a centrally lo-

cated trader's town placed at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize

Rivers. Residents of this commercial district included Englishman George

Ironsides, who maintained a substantial log dwelling and warehouse at the

community, and a French baker named Pirault (Perault, Pero) who supplied

bread to both Europeans and natives. Other entrepreneurs included John

Kinzie, a British silversmith; trader James Girty, Simon Girty's younger

brother; and two Americans, Henry Ball and Polly Meadows, who had been

captured after Arthur St. Clair's defeat in 1791. Meadows supported herself

by taking in laundry and sewing, while Ball found employment ferrying

goods and individuals to the Maumee Rapids some forty miles down river.

The same type of commercial center made up of French and English artisans,

mechanics, and traders also existed at Kekionga, a Miami village located at

the headwaters of the Maumee River in present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana.²⁰

The process of intercultural exchange also led to an evolution in the appear-

 

18. This and the following paragraph are drawn from Jones, A Journal of Two Visits, 54-55,

87-88, and Hinderaker, "The Creation of the American Frontier," 367-71. See also C. F.

Volney, A View of the Soil and Climate of the United States of America ... (Philadelphia, 1804),

378.

19. For Richard Conner, see also Charles N. Thompson, Sons of the Wilderness: John and

William Conner (Indianapolis, 1937), 11-14.

20. Spencer, Indian Captivity: A True Narrative of the Capture of Rev. 0. M. Spencer, 90-

92. Helen Hornbeck Tanner, "The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Community,"

Ethnohistory, 25 (Winter, 1978), 15-39; M. M. Quaife, ed., "Fort Wayne in 1790," Indiana

Historical Society Publications, 7 (Summer, 1921), 294-361.

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84                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

ance as well as the function of Ohio frontier communities. As early as the

1750s, European travelers within the Ohio Country noted that the region's

Indians were living in structures similar to European log cabins. One of the

earliest descriptions of these dwellings was made by James Smith, an eigh-

teen year old who had been captured by a group of Caughnewagas and

Delawares in western Pennsylvania in 1755. During the winter of 1755-56,

Smith was with a mixed band of Caughnewagas, Delawares, and Wyandots

when they constructed such a building near the mouth of the Black River,

west of present-day Cleveland. To construct the cabin, they

 

cut logs about fifteen feet long, and laid these logs upon each other, and drove

posts in the ground at each end to keep them together; the posts they tied together

at the top with bark, and by this means raised a wall fifteen feet long, and about

four feet high, and in the same manner they raised another wall opposite to this, at

about twelve feet distance; then they drove forks in the ground in the centre of

each end, and laid a strong pole from end to end on these forks; and from these

walls to the poles, they set up poles instead of rafters, and on these they tied small

poles in place of laths; and a cover was made of lynn bark, which will run even in

the winter season.

At the end of these walls they set up split timber, so that they had timber all

around, excepting a door at each end. At the top, in place of a chimney, they left

an open place, and for bedding they laid down the aforesaid kind of bark, on which

they spread bear skins. From end to end of this hut along the middle there were

fires, which the squaws made of dry split wood, and the holes or open places that

appeared, the squaws stopped with moss, which they collected from old logs; and

at the door they hung bear skin, and notwithstanding the winters are hard here, our

lodging was much better than what I expected.

 

It may be that this type of structure represented an adaptation of the traditional

native longhouse form to European construction techniques and materials.²¹

Indian-built log structures never completely replaced longhouses and bark-

covered wigwams. The Moravian mission at Schoenbrunn, for example, con-

tained about sixty log houses as well as a substantial number of "huts and

lodges." But as the century progressed, log homes became increasingly

common across the frontier. By the 1770s, many native log homes had taken

on a distinctively European character. David Zeisberger remarked that the

Moravian Delawares living in eastern Ohio "coming much in contact with the

whites, as they do not live more than a hundred miles from Pittsburgh," had

 

 

21. James Smith, An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Col.

James Smith . . . (Lexington, 1799), 18. For descriptions of similar buildings, see John

Heckewelder, Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Delaware and

Mohegan Indians ... (Philadelphia, 1820), 298, and Edmund De Schweinitz, The Life and

Times of David Zeisberger . .. (Philadelphia, 1870), 529; Spencer, Indian Captivity: A True

Narrative of the Capture of Rev. O. M. Spencer, 78-81. For a general discussion, see Donald

A. Hutslar, The Architecture of Migration: Log Construction in the Ohio Country, 1750-1850

(Athens, 1986), particularly 81-94.

• 13
 

Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                      85

learned to build "proper and comfortable" hewed log homes. In some cases they had even hired whites to come to their villages and build the structures for them. William Albert Galloway, a twentieth century informant who had spent much time in the late nineteenth century with the Shawnee after their removal to Missouri, claimed that the Ohio tribes had purchased axes, saws, and augers for this purpose from French and English traders throughout the frontier era.22 Finely made hewed log homes could be found in Indian communities across the Ohio Country. Zeisberger described Gekelemukpechunk (Newcomers- town) as "a large and flourishing town of about one hundred houses, mostly built of logs." When the Reverend David McClure visited Netawatwes, a village leader living there in September 1772, he commented that "Some of the houses are well built, with hewed logs, with stone chimnies, chambers & sellers. These I was told were built by the english captives in the time of the French wars." Although Netawatwes' home was the largest in the village, it was certainly rivaled by another owned by the village shaman. According to McClure, a stone-lined cellar, a stair case leading to the second story, a well- built stone chimney and fireplace, closets, and a first floor divided into several smaller rooms gave the building the appearance of an English dwelling.23     22. Hulbert and Schwarze, "David Zeisberger's History," 17-18, 380; William Albert Galloway, Old Chillicothe (Xenia, 1934), 13. 23. De Schweinitz, Life and Times of David Zeisberger, 366; Dexter, Diary of David

• 14
 

86                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

It was not just Indian homes that resembled English buildings. Entire vil-

lages took on the appearance of European settlements. Nicholas Cresswell

described Schoenbrunn as "a pretty town ... regularly laid out in three spa-

cious streets which meet in the centre, where there is a large meeting house

built of logs." Cultural transmission, though, remained selective. Many

Indian villages retained the organic and, to European eyes, seemingly haphaz-

ard placement of structures traditionally seen in native communities. David

Zeisberger noted that when building their towns, the Indians rarely considered

a "regular plan." David Jones echoed that observation. Commenting upon

the arrangement of buildings at Chillicothe, he remarked that there was no

more "regularity observed in this particular than in their morals, for any man

erects his house as fancy directs."²⁴

Mutual transculturation was also reflected in the social customs and institu-

tions that made up the fabric of everyday life along the Ohio frontier. In early

September 1775, Cresswell was at Coshocton where he witnessed an Indian

dance. According to the trader, the Indians made their music with "an old Keg

with one head knocked out and covered with a skin and beat with sticks."

Caught up in the excitement of the moment, Cresswell, who had been

"painted by my Squaw in the most elegant manner," stripped off all of his

clothing except for his shirt, breechclout, leggings, and moccasins. Joining

the dance, he moved around the campfire "whooping and hallooing" with the

most "uncouth and antic postures imaginable." While Cresswell danced

across the cultural divide, his Indian associates also used music to redefine

their place within frontier society. At Newcomerstown three days after the

dance, Cresswell listened while an Indian made "tolerable good music" play-

ing an old tin violin. The following evening the trader was at Gnadenhutten.

Visiting the village's chapel, Cresswell watched an Indian convert play the

congregation's spinet piano during the Moravian worship service.²⁵

Everyday social conventions also showed the influence of cultural re-inven-

tion. David Zeisberger noted that when Indians greeted one another, they did

so by shaking hands. Charles Johnston was with a group of settlers floating

down the Ohio River in 1790 when his boat was ambushed by Indians lying

in wait near the shore. The attackers quickly overpowered the vessel, killing

several of Johnston's companions and wounding others. The survivors were

herded toward one end of the boat as the Indians boarded, killed the wounded,

stripped the dead, and threw the bodies overboard. Johnston was convinced

that he and the others were about to be summarily executed. To his immense

surprise, the war party's leader approached Johnston, took the frightened

 

 

McClure, 61.

24. MacVeagh, The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 106; Jones, A Journal of Two Visits, 56;

Hulbert and Schwarze, "David Zeisberger's History," 87.

25. MacVeagh, The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 109- 12.

• 15
 

Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                               87

 

American's right hand and forearm in both of his hands and after pumping

them vigorously, exclaimed "How-d'ye-do! How-d'ye-do!" Later, as he was

being led to his captor's home in northern Ohio, Johnston commented that all

the Indians they met had "caught the common salutation" and greeted each

other by shaking hands and exchanging How-d'ye-dos. The custom seems to

have been of recent origin. James Smith explicitly noted that in the 1750s

the Indians with whom he was familiar did not use "how do you do," but re-

lied instead on greetings in their own language that translated into exchanges

such as "You are my friend; Truly friend, I am your friend," and "Cousin, you

yet exist; Certainly I do."²⁶

Inter-cultural contact led Europeans to incorporate Indian words and phrases

such as "squaw" and "succotash" into their vocabularies. Native Americans

throughout the Ohio Country were equally quick to selectively adopt

European expressions and figures of speech. Charles Johnston noted that

while only two of the Indians in his party could speak or understand his lan-

guage, virtually all of them cursed in English. Oliver Spencer remembered

that when a pack horse carrying a heavy load collapsed along a trail and re-

fused to go further, the horse's Indian owner "began in broken English to

curse him, and after loading the poor animal with all the opprobrious epithets

he could think of, left him lying in the path." Likewise, Colonel William

Christian, an officer in the Virginia Militia, reported that during the 1774

Battle of Point Pleasant, Indian warriors came close to the American lines and

"damn'd our men often for Sons-of-Bitches."²⁷

James Smith claimed that the Indians "never did curse or swear, until the

whites learned them." Furthermore, he also stated that the Ohio Indians

would frequently use European expletives without understanding their mean-

ing. While Smith was living with the Ohio tribes, Tecaughretanego, one of

his Caughnewaga companions, became angered and used the phrase "God

damn it" in Smith's presence. The outburst offended Smith and when he ex-

plained that the expression meant "calling upon the great spirit to punish the

object" that his friend was displeased with, his companion first became em-

barrassed and then confused. "He stood there for some time amazed," said

Smith,

 

and then said if this be the meaning of these words, what sort of people are the

whites? When the traders were among us these words seemed to be intermixed with

 

 

26. Hulbert and Schwarze, "David Zeisberger's History," 115; Charles Johnston, A

Narrative of the Incidents Attending the Capture, Detention, and Ransom of Charles Johnston, of

Botetourt County, Virginia . . . (New York, 1827), 16 and 40; Smith, An Account of the

Remarkable Occurrences, 78.

27. Johnston, A Narratives of the Incidents, 40; Spencer, Indian Captivity: A True Narrative

of the Capture of Rev. 0. M. Spencer, 49-50. "Col. William Christian to Col. William Preston,

15th Oct. 1774," 3QQ121, William Preston Papers, Draper Collection, State Historical Society

of Wisconsin.

• 16
 

88                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

all their discourse . . . he said the traders applied these words not only wickedly,

but often times very foolishly and contrary to sense or reason. He said, he remem-

bered once of a trader's accidentally breaking his gun lock, and on that occasion

calling out aloud God damn it-surely said he the gun lock was not an object worthy

of punishment for Owaneeyo, or the Great Spirit; he also observed the traders of-

ten used this expression when they were in a good humour and not displeased with

any thing. I acknowledged that the traders used this expression very often, in a

most irrational, inconsistent, and impious manner, yet I still asserted that I had

given the true meaning of these words. He replied, if so, the traders are as bad as

Oonasahroona, or the underground inhabitants, which is the name they give the

devils.²⁸

 

Social institutions, as well as social customs, were re-invented in the wake

of the region's inter-cultural contact. Native marriages were less permanent,

though no less solemn, than white unions. According to John Heckewelder,

when Indians entered into marriage it was understood by both partners that

they would not live together any longer "than suits their pleasure or conve-

nience." "The husband may put away his wife whenever he please," claimed

the evangelist, "and the woman may in like manner abandon her husband."

European men, particularly traders and merchants who resided in the Ohio

Country, frequently adopted the Indian mode of marriage and took Indian

wives in the Indian fashion.²⁹

Other Europeans occasionally attributed the transitory nature of Indian mar-

riages and the traders' readiness to enter into such unions to a widespread li-

centiousness among the Indians and a general degradation of moral standards

along the frontier. David Jones, for example, claimed that Indian women "are

purchased [by their husbands] by the night, week, month or winter, so that

they depend on fornication for a living," while Nicholas Cresswell described

the settlers living near Fort Pitt as "nothing but whores and rogues." Indians,

however, and the Europeans who married them, understood the marriage pact

differently.³⁰

Kinship formed the fundamental basis of native culture. Many of the activi-

ties and relationships that made up village life as well as the trading partner-

ships and diplomatic allegiances that defined a band's place within the broader

scope of native society were predicated upon familial affiliation. Marriage

permitted Indians to extend political and economic ties to the white world and

to carefully regulate the process through which Europeans became fully ac-

cepted, integrated, and participating members of Indian society. Natives bene-

 

 

28. Smith, An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences, 42.

29. Heckewelder, History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations, 154. David

Zeisberger also described this type of marital arrangement but was quick to point out that

"there are many cases where husband and wife are faithful to one another throughout life."

See Hulbert and Schwarze, "David Zeisberger's History," 79.

30. Jones, A Journal of Two Visits, 75-76; MacVeagh, The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 98.

See also Dexter, Diary of David McClure, 91.

• 17
 

Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                           89

 

fited from this arrangement in several ways. Marriage allowed tribal bands to

enforce social customs and impose standards of behavior and formalized social

obligations upon their new European members. Further, trade acted as a

means of preserving peaceful relations, both between natives and whites and

between tribal bands. Marriage served to stabilize the broad inter-cultural bond

between Indians and Europeans and to guarantee the supply of trade goods

necessary for the maintenance of intra-cultural alliances. Whites benefited

from the arrangement as well. The power of these marriages to cement eco-

nomic and diplomatic relationships was self-evident to Captain Hector

McLean, the British commander at Fort Maiden (Amherstburg, Ontario) in

1799. According to McLean, either "marriage or concubinage" connected most

of the officers attached to the British Indian Department at the post to the

Ohio Valley Shawnee. Likewise, the Indian woman who accompanied

Nicholas Cresswell while he traveled through Ohio in 1775 made his cloth-

ing, acted as a translator, tended his horses, prepared his camp, and undoubt-

edly arranged for him to meet the tribal leaders with whom he frequently dealt.

Cresswell was well aware of the importance of this woman to his success.

"However base it may appear to conscientious people," he noted, "it is abso-

lutely necessary to take a temporary wife if they have to travel amongst the

Indians." The transculturation of the Ohio Country, therefore, was based

upon the exchange of individuals as well as goods, ideas, and customs.³¹

Alexander McKee's father, Thomas McKee, a western Pennsylvania Indian

trader and sometime agent with the British Indian Department, died near his

trading post along the Susquehanna River in 1769. Four years later John

Parrish, a Quaker missionary from Philadelphia, and two companions traveled

through western Pennsylvania and into the Ohio Country. Their journey

was, in part, a social one, an opportunity too long delayed to renew friend-

ships and strengthen acquaintances throughout the region. On July 26th, in a

small settlement west of the Ohio River, Parrish had the extraordinary good

fortune to run into an old and dear friend, Thomas McKee. At their meeting

McKee, after inquiring about the health of his friends, gave Parrish and his

companions a "hearty welcome," invited them to accompany him, and es-

corted the group to his home.

Throughout the following week, Parrish and his friends were entertained

with great hospitality. McKee's Indian wife lavished her attention on them,

saw to their every comfort, and prepared their meals from the best provisions

 

 

31. The British Indian Department was the Crown agency charged with maintaining Great

Britain's economic and military alliance with the Ohio Country tribes. "Captain Hector

McLean to Major James Green, August 27, 1799," Michigan Pioneer and Historical

Collections, 40 vols. (Lansing, 1877-1929), 12:305; MacVeahgh, The Journal of Nicholas

Cresswell, 102-08, 113-14, 122. See also Dexter, Diary of David McClure, 53; J. B. Brebner,

"Subsidized Intermarriage with the Indians: An Incident in British Colonial Policy," Canadian

Historical Review, 6 (March, 1925), 33-36, and Merrell, "Our Bond of Peace," 198-201.

• 18
 

90                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

available at the town. By August 3rd it was time to return. McKee, having

business to transact in Pittsburgh, decided to accompany the Quaker and his

friends to the frontier outpost. As they traveled up the Ohio River, they

paused at Alexander McKee's trading post and acquired the provisions to con-

tinue their journey. The party then continued to Pittsburgh where, according

to Parrish, McKee met with all of the town's "men of note."³²

Thomas McKee was an Indian, a Delaware who, as a token of respect for

his friend Thomas McKee, had taken the trader's name and retained it after his

death. James Kenny, a Pittsburgh trader, recorded many such Indians includ-

ing Jimmy Wilson, John Armstrong, Sir William Johnson, William

Turnum, and John Doubty, as they bartered for provisions at his establish-

ment. European traders found Indian names notoriously difficult to pro-

nounce, and it is likely that many of these Indians used their European names

only to facilitate their dealings with Kenny and the other merchants within

the region. On one occasion, for example, Kenny noted that when a young

Indian man "having no English name" came to trade, "I gave him my name,

which he said he would keep." Thomas McKee's acceptance of his friend's

name, though, appears to be more than a matter of mere convenience.³³

McKee bore the outward sign of a deeper cultural reality. The Ohio frontier

was a place of great cultural restlessness, a setting where personal identity re-

flected the impermanence of one's ethnic, national, or racial affiliation.

McKee was part of a world that permitted individuals to cross racial and ethnic

barriers both symbolically and literally with a considerable degree of intimacy

and completeness. Indeed it was a world that allowed certain individuals to be

either Indian or European at their discretion. The eastern woodland Indians

had long used the "mourning war" to take revenge upon their enemies. The

mourning war was fought using small-scale raids to acquire either Indian or

European captives. These prisoners would later be adopted into the tribe that

had captured them to replace other tribal members who had died from disease

or combat. After James Smith's capture, he was bathed, dressed in Indian

clothing, painted in Indian fashion, and brought before a council of village

leaders. Eventually, one of the tribal elders arose and said "My son, you are

now flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone."

 

 

 

32. "Extracts From Journal of John Parrish, 1773," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and

Biography, 16 (October, 1892), 442-48; John Lacey, "Journal of a Mission to the Indians in

Ohio by Friends from Pennsylvania, July-September, 1773," in William Henry Egle, Notes and

Queries: Historical, Biographical, and Genealogical, Relating Chiefly to Interior Pennsylvania,

12 vols. (Harrisburg, 1893-1900), 7:103-07.

33. John W. Jordan, "Journal of James Kenny, 1761-1763," Pennsylvania Magazine of

History and Biography, 37 (January and April, 1913), 1-47, 152-201. For Thomas McKee's

tribal affiliation, see American Archives: Consisting of a Collection of Authentick Records,

State Papers, Debates, and Letters and other Notices of Publick Affairs. ... In Six Series

(Washington, D. C., 1833), 4th series, 1:478.

• 19
 

Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange                                91

 

By the ceremony which was performed this day, every drop of white blood was

washed out of your veins; you are taken into the Caughnewaga nation, and initi-

ated into a warlike tribe; you are adopted into a great family, and now received with

great seriousness and solemnity in the room and place of a great man; after what

has passed this day, you are now one of us by an old strong law and custom-My

son, you have now nothing to fear, we are now under the same obligations to love,

support and defend you that we are to love and to defend one another, therefore you

are to consider yourself as one of our people.

 

Smith at first doubted the truth of what he had been told, but later commented

that "from that day I never knew them to make any distinction between me

and themselves in any respect whatever." This evolving, fluid sense of per-

sonal identity shared by both Indians and Europeans reflected the culturally

complex and pragmatic nature of the Ohio frontier. Personal identity could be

expediently re-invented as circumstance required. For many who lived in the

Ohio back country, racial and ethnic affiliation became a temporary response

to altered personal relationships, shifting political contexts, and emerging

economic opportunities.³⁴

Indians and Europeans alike, then, had transformed the Ohio Country and

with it themselves. An overtly negotiated process of selective cultural ex-

change defined the encounter between Native Americans and whites along the

Ohio frontier and had fashioned the region into a zone of mutual re-invention.

Cultural mediators were at the heart of this exchange. Relations between

Europeans and natives throughout the Ohio hinterlands were always complex,

comprised of an interwoven net of competing interests. For much of the

early frontier era, the process of transculturation permitted both parties to rec-

oncile their differences and allowed each to engage the other peacefully, prof-

itably, and with a degree of understanding otherwise impossible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

34. Smith, An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences, 10-11. See also James Axtell, "The

White Indians," in James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial

North America (Oxford and New York, 1985), 302-28; Daniel K. Richter, "War and Culture:

The Iroquois Experience," William and Mary Quarterly, 40 (October, 1983), 528-59.

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